Government Debt

Every now and then, a select group from the economic illuminati retire to their monastic study and devise a splendid idea to try and pay off their previous splendid idea.

Splendid idea number one was to borrow so much money that we put ourselves in more strife than the early settlers in our desire to adorn the nation with an eclectic mix of rubbish that apparently was going to save us from Asia ceasing to purchase our minerals. The relationship between our stimulus and mineral exports was as clear as mud, but there was an emphatic defence of this fantastic proposition by Labor.

The Treasury fiddling of the graphs depicting the relationship between our and other nations’ fiscal stimulus packages and the effect on their respective economies shows that when the graphs were corrected the relationship was hardly apparent.

Continue reading "The mining tax: Treasury’s own love formula" »

The late Lee Atwater is a legend in the US Republican Party. Hailing from South Carolina he successfully rewrote the book on American election campaigning. Atwater ran scare campaigns and he was good at it. He made a name for himself in the early 1980’s with his aggressive campaign tactics including push polling and dog whistling on racial issues in the South.

Atwater won election after election running scare campaigns on any issue he could find. He ran scare campaigns on religion; he ran scare campaigns on race; he once even ran a scare campaign claiming his opponent was unfit for office because he had suffered from depression as a teenager.

Lee Atwater understood people and, more importantly, he understood the power of emotion over rational thought. He used to say that people vote their fears over their hopes and that fact shaped his campaigning.

Continue reading "Frightening the life out of voters over debt" »

What Wayne Swan didn’t tell you tonight was that by 2012 your share of Government Debt will be $8308. Your wife, your husband, each of your kids, your Mum, your Dad, your siblings – each and every one of them $8308 in the red.

When Paul Keating handed back the keys to the Treasury in 1996, that figure was $5258. It took John Howard and Peter Costello nine years to bring us back into the black. All that talk of “temporary borrowings” scattered through the Budget papers sounds more than a little ambitious.

Mash up historical and projected Government Debt figures with population stats from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the true extent of Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan’s descent into deficit is shown in what is, admittedly, a very ugly chart.

Continue reading "Til debt do us part: the credit bill of every Australian" »